We’re back to Nichijou, for one more round of exuberant and nigh-useless notes. But hey, you guys are only paying a slightly overpriced movie ticket’s price for them, so let’s just huddle in and enjoy the madness together. Anything can happen in this ridiculous friggin’ show, so let’s see what portion of anything today will provide!

Starting off in the classroom this time, with the students running through escalating statements of relief at being done with a math test. “I can’t believe it’s over” to “my parents will give you all a bag of rice” to “we’re getting married.” Ah, Nichijou

That moment in the OP of Mio being noticed by the goat as she’s stalking her crush is such a perfect summation of what Nichijou does. An ordinary high school girl swooning over her crush, almost spoiled by… the goat that he’s riding for some reason

A quiet morning with Mio and her sister. Mio is not amused by her sister’s kendo costume

“You’re mad at me for putting a knight in your mont blanc.” An extremely, extremely specific offense

“Why on earth would you do that? I don’t get it!” For once a Nichijou joke is actually happening to Mio, so she can respond to it like an ordinary human being. Yuuko just gets progressively more freaked out by Nichijou happenings, but she’s used to not being taken seriously, so she can’t respond with confidence. Mio is the most normal member of the group, so she can react in a normal way when the world around her is being its Nichijou self

The show continues to use quick jumps back to single-tone backgrounds for visual/physical punchlines. You rarely see a show so at ease jumping into comic-style gag bits

Ooh, very nice interstitial shot this time. A riverbank with a bunch of turtles

“Now that she’s in college, she really should learn some sympathy.” Sorry Mio, turns out a lot of us just turn into bigger children as we age

Impressionistic painted backgrounds to convey how angry Mio is about having her sister eat her strawberry

“A shortcake without its strawberry is just bread.” Pretty hot take by Mio, but it does seem like the importance of that one dang strawberry is a trend in anime and manga, from K-On to Yotsuba

I like that we get the continuity of the teacher grading the quizzes with Mio’s naked dude drawings, and I also like that we can tell who’s grading them because even the teacher’s hand has nervous sweat dots coming out of it

Oh my god, Yuuko is such a condescending asshole to her friends. They really set her up to be a person who earns all of her pratfalls

This scene at the restaurant could well be a Lucky Star scene, as far as grounded but slightly silly conversations go. Of course, the difference between this and Lucky Star is that here, a conversation like that is setup, whereas Lucky Star just doesn’t have anything else going on

Yuuko’s visual expressiveness is as strong as ever. Clapping for service, getting mildly annoyed when no one responds, but shrugging it off as all part of her plan. Yuuko is more often humanized through her body language than through her frankly abrasive personality – her physical actions are just as wild and self-involved, but there’s a charm there

A very universal experience, waiting for your one dish as everyone else is served. Trying to act casual as the minutes tick by. They really capture the physicality of that moment – Yuuko keeps avoiding her friends’ looks, and sits sort of half-perched sideways in the chair, as if to either immediately notice when her food’s coming or act as a physical reminder to the restaurant staff that she hasn’t been served yet

Yep, “Things We Think Are Cool” is a new episodic segment

And now Yuuko’s being kept up at night by a single mosquito. Interesting new visual effect to connote what I assume is meant to imply “aggrieved, bloodthirsty eyes” – a single dark line down the middle, almost like cat eyes

Yuuko breaking out all the martial arts to kill these mosquitos. I wish there was a montage of KyoAni’s incidental, ridiculous little action sequences to further torment the people who think their talents are “wasted” on stuff other than big dumb action shows

And now her mom smacking her is presented as a moving multi-step diagram. Nichijou continuously breaking new ground in slapstick innovation

Yuuko has a tiny eggplant on a stand on her windowsill, because of course she does

Time for more Helvetica Standard, with an angel trying to teach a tengu how to say chirashizushi

Light visual flourish of the angel’s hiragana characters being translated into kanji by the tengu

The amorphous nature of the characters’ bodies enables some of the gags nicely. Yuuko is reduced to a head on a vague blob-body as she tried to sit in front of the fan

The more I watch, the more I’m appreciating how much the professor’s “accent” adds to all of her scenes. Her mixture of childish affectation and over-enunciation is so perfect

Night is arriving and the turtles are going to bed

I like this shot emphasizing the professor’s ridiculous outfit – she’s basically constantly shuffling against the hem of her lab coat, and really should be tripping at all times

“Your right arm is a loser.” What a punchline. They drag out the snack-eating and Nano being tempted by the thought of losing her key for so long that you essentially forget this all started with the professor being excited about her popsicle stick, and then suddenly hit you with the reprise long after it lost all relevance to the conversation. Comedy is a strange artform

“If you search for it, you’ll find everything.” Thought by Mai as she’s staring at a pair of dogs. Mai is wise

Holy crap, we even get an in-world explanation for the egg-headed jump rope dudes. I guess they’re, uh, rice cake costumes? For some reason???

This wild, Yuasa-style shot for Mio’s reaction to being tricked. Nichijou still finding new ways to express “UWAHHHHH????!?!?”

“This is their mascot? He doesn’t have eyes or a mouth”

“This rice cake fair isn’t fair at all.” Jeez, Mio is so frustrated she’s making Yuuko jokes

Mio is a terrifying rice cake monster

They’re getting some great body language out of Mio even with her head stuck in a giant rice cake ball. It’s like they’re setting little visual challenges for themselves

The stand owner tries to be a lascivious dancing rice cake, and is promptly arrested

And that’s it for this episode! Dancing rice cakes, Yuuko in despair, and even the advent of a couple new regular features. Mio got a lot of really solid material this time, as her fundamental normalcy was tested against the Nichijouness of the world around her. The show still hasn’t figured out how to give Mai a dedicated segment, but I’m interested in seeing if they somehow manage that eventually. NICHIJOU ONWARD

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